Abstract

The Xe nuclear magnetic resonancechemical shift differences that afford the discrimination between various biological environments are of current interest for biosensor applications and medicaldiagnostic purposes. In many such environments the Xe signal appears close to that in water. We calculate average Xe chemical shifts (relative to the free Xe atom) in solution in eleven liquids: water, isobutane, perfluoro-isobutane, n-butane, n-pentane, neopentane, perfluoroneopentane, n-hexane, n-octane, n-perfluorooctane, and perfluorooctyl bromide. The latter is a liquid used for intravenous Xe delivery. We calculate quantum mechanically the Xe shielding response in Xe-molecule van der Waals complexes, from which calculations we develop Xe (atomic site) interpolating functions that reproduce the ab initio Xe shielding response in the complex. By assuming additivity, these Xe-site shielding functions can be used to calculate the shielding for any configuration of such molecules around Xe. The averaging over configurations is done via molecular dynamics (MD). The simulations were carried out using a MD technique that one of us had developed previously for the simulation of Henry’s constants of gases dissolved in liquids. It is based on separating a gaseous compartment in the MD system from the solvent using a semipermeable membrane that is permeable only to the gas molecules. We reproduce the experimental trends in the Xe chemical shifts in n-alkanes with increasing number of carbons and the large chemical shift difference between Xe in water and in perfluorooctyl bromide. We also reproduce the trend for a given solvent of decreasing Xe chemical shift with increasing temperature. We predict chemical shift differences between Xe in alkanes vs their perfluoro counterparts.